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Thursday, 19 November 2015

WHEN SWAZILAND ARMY INVADED UNISWA

Students and prodemocracy activists this week have marked
the anniversary of the time the Swazi Army invaded the University of Swaziland (UNISWA)
in what one international newspaper called, ‘a crackdown of unprecedented
violence in the history of the university.’

The invasion which came to be known as ‘Black
Wednesday’ happened on 14 November 1990.

The Times
Higher Education Supplement newspaper in the UK reported, ‘the Swazi
government dispatched armed police and military units to the [University of
Swaziland] campus to disperse boycotting students. It was a crackdown of
unprecedented violence in the history of the university.’

The event is still commemorated at UNISWA, but over
time it is thought that many of today’s students do not know much about what happened that day at the university’s
Kwaluseni campus.

The news agency Inter Press Service (IPS) called the student unrest in
1990 a ‘rebellion’ that ‘became a seminal event that signalled a new generation’s
political consciousness’. It was, IPS said, ‘a dawning political awareness born
from a confluence of historical forces then sweeping the world and the Southern
African region’.

The IPS report which
was a retrospective nine years after the event (2 December 1999) said ‘armed
soldiers pushed police aside and forced students out of the library where they
had barricaded themselves’.

The day began as a ‘disorganised demonstration’ against campus issues such as
poor food ‘but soon turned into demands for democratic reforms in Swaziland's
government’.

The IPS report quoted Manzini lawyer Lindiwe Khumalo-Matse, a university
student at the time, saying, ‘The reason why soldiers were called in was
because government saw our protest as a political uprising.’

Khumalo-Matse was further quoted by IPS, ‘This was because of the involvement
of Sabelo Dlamini, who was a member of the People's United Democratic movement
(PUDEMO). Sabelo was prominent in the Students Representative Council,’ hesaid.

In 1990, one of its most draconian measures, a 60-Day Detention Law, was still
in force, permitting authorities to lock up anyone they saw as a threat to
public order. All political protestors were designated as such threats.

The violence that ensued after soldiers swept through campus has been a
sensitive subject with government ever since. A commission of enquiry had its
report secreted away for years, with a bowdlerized version finally released to
the public in 1997.Two students who were seriously injured sued government for
damages, and their cases were settled out of court.

IPS reported that not only was the traditional leadership’s fear of democracy
revealed on ‘Black Wednesday’, but also a proletariat attitude of resentment,
displayed by the soldiers, was shown against the educated student ‘elite.’ The
military's code name for the university invasion was ‘Operation Tinfundiswa
(educated ones).’

‘It was a time of wild rumors,’ recalled Khumalo-Matse. ‘We heard that
government feared we would burn down the library, which belied common sense
because we were inside and would have incinerated ourselves.’

The army officials in charge gave students a five-minute warning, and then
unleashed what one onlooker later told an investigating committee was a
‘military riot against civilians’.

Students were beaten as they emerged from the library to escape teargas
canisters hurled through windows, and had to run a gauntlet of soldiers. Other
soldiers chased students until they cornered them along fences. As they beat
students with batons, the soldiers informed them they were being ‘punished’.

People in Swaziland were shocked by the brutality. Particularly offensive was
one newspaper photo depicting a young woman carried out of the library between
soldiers ‘like a slaughtered pig’, according to a letter writer to the Times of Swaziland.

This is his account from his website that is no
longer available online.

‘BLOODY WEDNESDAY IN SWAZILAND

‘November 14, 1990, ‘Bloody Wednesday’ in Swaziland
still lingers as a most important moment in my life. It was the only day that I
thought I surely might die. I was a Fulbright Professor at the University of
Swaziland in south east Africa that year.

‘University students began boycotting classes on November 12 in protest of a
lack of faculty lecturers, poor food conditions, and the suspension of a
popular young sociology lecturer for promoting democracy in Swaziland.

‘Early on November 12, all 1 600 university students held a protest meeting and
boycotted all classes. At noon, they dumped their plastic wrapped lunches at
the administration office door.

‘The Swazi radio, and tv stations, Swaziland’s newspapers gave extensive
coverage to the dumping of the lunches. Many Swazis were subsistence farmers
who often went to bed hungry; thus this student decision reflected very badly
on them. All students received a University notice demanding the end of their
class boycott on November 13. They decided to continue it. The University
Council demanded their return to classes on November 14, or be considered in
defiance of the twenty-three year old King Mswati III.

‘Another student meeting on November 14 continued the boycott. About 500
students peacefully barricaded themselves in the two-storey university library.
Several hundred students left campus or stayed in their student hostel area. At
about 5pm, armed Swazi soldiers entered the high fenced campus.

‘A university official drove through the campus announcing the immediate campus
closure. Five young women rushed to me and asked for emergency protection in my
home. I took them there immediately.

‘A fifteen hour rain and thunderstorm had just begun. The young women were
quite terrified.

‘The young soldiers broke into the library and the
student hostels, dragging students out, beating both men and women with their
night sticks on their arms and legs, and forcing them to run a gauntlet toward
the front gate while the soldiers gave them sharp blows.

‘The soldiers taunted the students: “We’ll beat the English out of you.” They
were especially vicious toward the women. The soldiers had been stationed that
day at the high school next door to the campus and drank lots of beer before
they attacked the campus, making them even more violent than otherwise so
likely.

‘A neighbor warned us that at 10pm, soldiers would search our houses and arrest
any students found there or on campus. Two Canadian families and I, in a
caravan of three autos, took 11 frightened Swazi students in the three cars to
the front gate to take them to safety.

‘With a gun pointed the first driver’s cheek, he got permission from the guard
to leave the campus with the students. In the swirling rain, lightening, and
thunderstorm, we took the students to safe shelters. When we returned to campus
late in the evening, two soldiers were posted all night in the back and in the
front of our houses.

‘With some students, I drove to the nearby hospital where more than 120
students had received emergency treatment. We visited more than a dozen badly
injured students. We learned that soldiers possibly had injured as many as
300-400 and had killed perhaps as many as two-four students.

‘The Swazi radio and tv stations gave no information about what had happened
after the students had dumped their food. However, the two Swazi newspapers did
give the event considerable coverage over several weeks. They also printed many
letters to the editor decrying the incident and called for a national judicial
enquiry. Reuters News Agency and the South African press gave it some coverage.

‘Amnesty International cited it in their 1991 Annual Review. The University
remained closed for two months, reopening on January 14. A national judicial
enquiry, more heavily critical of the student boycott than the hostile military
response, began on March 14, 1991 and ended on May 14.The enquiry panel never
released any details to the public.

‘The print media called the incident ‘Black Wednesday’ but my students and I
attempted to have the newspapers rename it Bloody Wednesday since so much
innocent student blood had been shed.

‘I always recall that day as my worst and best day in Swaziland when much evil
occurred but many good people at the campus, the hospital, and nearby clinics
generously helped the students. Do these former African students, now in their
thirties, still remember that day? I assume so. I certainly always do.’